


Musings of a Landlady

by schrodingerscat



Category: Sunshine - Robin McKinley
Genre: Gen, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-21
Updated: 2012-12-21
Packaged: 2017-11-21 20:49:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/601934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schrodingerscat/pseuds/schrodingerscat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yolande muses on how the relationship between her and Rae went from landlady and tenant to mentor and student</p>
            </blockquote>





	Musings of a Landlady

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mythicbeast](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mythicbeast/gifts).



> I hope this fulfilled some of your wishes. I found it impossible to get into Con's head, so you get some of Yolande's thoughts on their relationship instead.

I knew she was a Blaise the first time I met her. How could I not? She radiated their odd sort of power, for all that her mother had tried to force it down. But it's hard to hide that kind of power from a wardskeeper, even a retired one.

If she had been a Blaise who owned her identity as a Blaise, maybe I wouldn't have rented to her. Then again, Raven Blaise probably wouldn't have tried to rent an apartment from a wardskeeper. Rae Seddon, though. She needed a space to figure herself out in. And any problems that cropped up with her were likely to be intriguing, not bothersome. I'd almost convinced myself that her mother had done a better job than I though in stifling her Blaise side when Sunshine was kidnapped by vampires.

I was surprised it took vampires to jump-start her power usage again. I shouldn't have been. The Blaises have always had a closer relationship with Others than the rest of the magic-using families. And working in Old Town, Sunshine spent plenty of time around Weres—the other reasonable possibility for jump-starting her. And since Mrs. Bialosky hadn't managed it, vampires it was. The Blaises have always kept to themselves. Most magic-using families are insular, of course, but the Blaises were worse about it than others. They almost never went outside the family for warding, which was normally how I obtained my information on magic users, through the network my master maintained. But with the Blaise family, all I had to go on was rumour. I liked Sunshine, and I enjoyed watching her come into herself. Once the immediate crisis with warring vampires was over, she began to explore her powers to their full extent. I felt that my role in all this was just beginning, and that the relationship that had begun as landlady and tenant was always meant to progress beyond that, to mentor and student.

I had never known someone whose affinity was for sunlight before but it wasn't unheard of. Her counter-affinity towards vampires was more unusual, but I suspect there have been Blaises with the same counter-affinity before. I didn't know much more than that about Rae's powers before I began training her in earnest. I knew she could transmute—going so far as to transmute worked metal when she tried, and her curious affinities had proved useful in battle against vampires, as well as useful for her vampire ally. I did not know about her ability to sense magic within objects until the morning she appeared with a sackful of items that she said had been in the possession of a vampire for decades but were human in origin. Those objects! I have known magic users who would have killed to get their hands on some of those enchantments. They were extremely lasting in power, to have survived decades shut in the cupboard of a vampire, only to revive immediately when in the presence of a human. Those objects proved extremely useful in training Rae.

We spent that day testing the limits of Rae's powers by investigating the objects. It turned out that she could sense any object that had been handled and used by a member of her family—blood calls to blood, I suppose. She described it to me as a “fizzing sort of recognition in the back of my head. Not exactly a comfortable sort of feeling.”

As the days and weeks progressed—with Rae beginning to lead a double life as a coffeehouse baker and magician's apprentice—I became more accustomed to seeing a vampire fade into existence at the edges of my wards in the evenings. It was Rae's friend, Constantine I knew was his name now. He came to help with the teaching, and as I discovered, to acquire any such objects as I thought might further the progress of our student. He was remarkably good at such tasks, although I suppose a centuries old vampire would have had plenty of time to hone his skills. In novels and takes it is traditional for the apprentice, after they have finished learning, to embark on a quest of some sort to prove their skills. In life such things are more difficult. Rae was still carrying on her dual life at the coffeehouse. She was still being watched by SOF. There are not many epic quests to go on. I suppose I could have sent her off to find members of her father's family, but I rather thought they would find her once they felt conditions had been met. I had no idea what those conditions were of course. And if Rae's family didn't find her, I rather thought that Constantine would arrange a meeting. But I still felt bad that I couldn't arrange some formal acknowledgement that Rae had completed her training.

I often thought it was a shame that SOF was such a large, corrupt organization—beyond the obvious reasons why a citizen might be upset about a corrupt governmental organization, that is. Rae's talents were uniquely suited for the type of work that SOF is supposed to do. It takes most wardskeepers (myself included) years—decades—of training to learn how to identify Weres and some of the more subtle demon partbloods, but Rae can instinctively do it at a glance. She did tell me that this was due to an exchange of blood with a vampire, rather than a family talent, but that makes no difference. If it were not for the woman known to her underlings as “the goddess of pain,” Rae could be a very helpful contractor for our local SOF. But while that woman is around, I do not feel comfortable exposing Rae's talents, nor does she. As a wardskeeper, my talents are defensive in nature while Rae's are more offensive. Sometimes I wish that she had teachers more suited to the task than myself and her vampire friend. Other times I think that we are precisely what her grandmother wanted for her.


End file.
